D&D 5E I'm surprised there hasn't been a mention of the Vistani.

[The Black Ranger]

I always liked the gypsy Vistani of Ravenloft so I'm a little curious as to why we haven't heard any mention of them.

 

[dream66_]

Cuz they are unique to a out of print campaign setting that is unlikely to see print anytime soon. They have nothing to do with the currently default heavily promoted campaign setting of Forgotten Realms. And they can be slightly offensive to a real world ethnic group.

All good reasons to not mention them.

 

[Reynard]

Cuz they are unique to a out of print campaign setting that is unlikely to see print anytime soon. They have nothing to do with the currently default heavily promoted campaign setting of Forgotten Realms. And they can be slightly offensive to a real world ethnic group.

All good reasons to not mention them.

We live in a world in which the genre-fiction iconic image of an ethnicity is considered offensive, while the real world version of that culture getting the Jersey Shore treatment is popular.

Weird.

 

[Morrus]

Plenty of out of print settings, and elements and characters from them, get mentioned in 5E's core.

Whether this particular example out of many appears in any of the core rulebooks is yet to be seen. I'll bet Strahd gets a namedrop.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

I always liked the gypsy Vistani of Ravenloft so I'm a little curious as to why we haven't heard any mention of them.

I would love to see them as a sub race of humans with cool race features.... and they are not gypsys so can we please drop that they are offensive... they are a magical socoity of wanders that have firm roots in fantasy

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

I would love to see them as a sub race of humans

Do we really need yet another subrace? Whether they're intended to be gypsies or not, it's far too easy to accidentally make a human subrace offensive.

 

[The Black Ranger]

Why are people getting hung on gypsy when that's what they have been known by? We have oriental settings and people, we have Aztecs, we have Anglo's, we have Vikings, we have Native Americans. It's only racial when you bring race into a perfectly viable and unrelated discussion.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Why are people getting hung on gypsy when that's what they have been known by? We have oriental settings and people, we have Aztecs, we have Anglo's, we have Vikings, we have Native Americans. It's only racial when you bring race into a perfectly viable and unrelated discussion.

Yup, like Druids and Knights that both could be part of your ansestry... and there are modern people who call themselves druids

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

Why are people getting hung on gypsy when that's what they have been known by? We have oriental settings and people, we have Aztecs, we have Anglo's, we have Vikings, we have Native Americans. It's only racial when you bring race into a perfectly viable and unrelated discussion.

The Oriental settings tend to get into trouble only when they're stereotypical. Generally they've been well-researched, at least as of 3.0, but one of those classes (I think it was Sword & Fist's samurai) regularly got poor marks for being crammed with negative stereotypes, in addition to being poorly-researched and being a poor class mechanically. Characters in that setting are not given special powers or weaknesses relative to other humans, and had such a decision been made, would have sparked protests.

I haven't seen an Aztec setting for D&D since 2e. I'm not sure if the issue was an unpopular setting, or allegations of racism though. (I haven't played or read any settings like Maztica, so I can't really analyze that.)

What is the Anglo setting? Never heard of it, at least not described that way.

Vikings don't get special racial powers, and members of numerous cultures can be barbarians. At least in 3e (there's a Strahd adventure) the Vistani don't get special racial powers either. They're portrayed as a human culture just like any other human culture.

Yup, like Druids and Knights that both could be part of your ansestry... and there are modern people who call themselves druids

I wonder if modern-day druids are offended by portrayals of D&D druids. The only thing the D&D druid has in common with real-life druids is the name. Certainly real-life druids could not cast actual magic spells. Very little information about real-life druids survived to the modern day and most of that information came from the Romans, not exactly an unbiased source.

 

[the Jester]

.... and they are not gypsys so can we please drop that they are offensive...

I'm pretty sure (although I don't have it on hand to check) that I6 explicitly describes them as gypsies. Certainly, they are usually portrayed in a way that is very suggestive of the stereotypes of gypsies and the gypsy lifestyle (wagons, moving from place to place, Tarot readings, etc).